Citrix Netscaler VPX Express (free but powerful)

An often overlooked resource (free) for small environments or for deployments with low requirements is the use of the Netscaler VPX Express. This is a very powerful device, and the VPX express gives you the features of a Standard Edition VPX express platform but has a few limitations.

I think you get the idea, so what are the major limitations of the Netscaler VPX Express? This sounds too good to be true..

License only last one year.. (bummer), “but wait there’s more..” but its free and you can just request another license for the next year

5 Mbps throughput (this applies to all traffic and can be upgraded with a simple license purchase)

No SSL offload (this is try of any VPX Netscaler) The Netscaler physical appliances offer SSL offload to dedicated hardware for encryption/decryption. This improved the performance of the box as the CPU doesn’t have to handle the SSL encryption/decryption.

This is only the tip of the iceberg for what the Netscaler can do and the free ones main limitation is the bandwidth which can be upgraded with a license purchase. You can also deploy as many of these appliances as you need to handle the workload, each pair would have the 5 Mpbs limitation. It may not sound like much bandwidth but that is per second.

Test it out, deploy the VPX Express yourself and see what your workload throughput is by putting it through the Netscaler and you may be surprised, maybe the VPX Express will be right for you… The Netscaler VPX Express is easy to deploy and can run on VMware vSphere, Hyper-V and XenServer, there are appliances for each of these hypervisors.

I wish there were an easy answer. Barry Schiffer wrote a good post on sizing the Netscaler both MPX and VPX platforms. The answer is really that "It Depends" however there is good information out there to help you find that answer.

Good post!At the moment we use Citrix Secure Gateway with our Citrix XenApp farm with Citrix Webinterface.In our new environment we will use storefront in combination with the free VPX.What options will we miss in with the free VPX solution?

I am currently using Xenapps 7.6 with Storefront and Netscaler VPX Express. When users are logged in they use 1 of the Gateway User Licenses. So, currently I can only have a Maximum of 5 users logged in at any given time. Is there another way to configure Xenapps and/or Netscaler VPX Express to get more than 5 users in Xenapps at 1 time?

Can I have multiple Netscaler VPX Express Instances going to 1 storefront? Can I configure it so In Domain Users don't use Netscaler since they already have a trust?

Currently I only have 15 Xenapp Licenses and it seems like Netscaler VPX 10 at $1500 is a lot to spend, let alone over kill for only an additional 10 users max.